That must be really irritating that after so much work you've still got the same issue.

Breaking in the new cam is one thing I'm really not looking forward to on our new engine. Going from 0 - 2500rpm on a brand new engine the second it starts seems awfully brutal but if that's what the instructions say!

David.

I keep making myself more work on this car...

The steering box has been removed due to the leak, I bought one on eBay to fit to the car so that I can just get it finished and I can rebuilt this one at my leisure with a new seal if it's ok once I've stripped it down and checked it.

I was thinking about this VSE earlier and remembered that it took an awful long time for it to warm up and switch to LPG. Looking at the setup today I decided to make a load of changes. The LPG ECU was mounted on a bracket mounted to the top of the drivers side shock absorber mounting and the reducer was mounted onto the other side of the car.

The installation looked a mess as all of the wiring was tied to the bulkhead and I didn't like it.

Today I've removed all of the LPG wiring, relocated the ECU into the empty box behind the battery (where the ECU sits on a GEMS car), relocated the bracket for the vaporiser to the drivers side shock mount, and started to tidy everything up. This has massively reduced the length of the coolant pipes as they no longer have to run the width of the bulkhead to get to the reducer and it keeps a lot of the LPG wiring hidden under the battery cover when it's fitted.

My other VSE has the gas installed in a similar manner and it looks much tidier under the bonnet.

Annoyingly, moving the reducer to the other side means I need to reroute the LPG pipe from the tank as it runs down the NS chassis leg. To do that, I'm going to have to rotate the tank around 90 degrees too but it'll be worth it when it's finished. Looking at the pipe from the tank to the engine bay today I noticed there's a union joining the pipe under the B pillar of the car. It probably isn't an issue but I'd rather it was one piece from front to back so I've ordered 6 metres of pipe, some P clips and some tech screws to mount it.

The reducer is covered in coolant stains and looks awful, I've tried rebuilding these before and have never had good results so I'm going to replace it whilst I'm at it.

The ECU has REG by OMVL written on the front of it. On the label it's got DREAM XXI-P. I don't suppose anybody knows where I can get a manual/wiring diagram for this setup?

Thanks,
David.

I noticed last night whilst working on my P38 just how badly faded a couple of my door handles and the grill are.

Everybody seems to paint the grill black but on the late cars it was quite a light grey colour. Does anybody know what a decent colour match would be?

Halfords do a grey bumper paint but the reviews say it dries brown so that's been ruled out straight away!

Thanks,

David.

I changed everything over last night.

It was very easy with the wheel arch liner out of the way. Rave said to remove the windscreen washer bottle but I didn't need to do that either. A little bit of wriggling and it came out.

The new (used) steering box, steering link arm, track rod and drag link have been fitted. The tracking is now out but I need my new rear height sensors to arrive so I can calibrate it before having the tracking done.

I drove it up the road last night and it felt much better but it was difficult to tell! Fingers crossed the sensors arrive quickly!

David.

A 3 foot 1/2" breaker bar will be much more useful in my opinion. You'll be able to shift a lot more then an impact gun and have the option of slipping a tube over the end of it for something that's much tighter.

I've got a couple of impact guns in the workshop, a 1/2" battery one and a 1/2" airline one, I don't use either of them very often as I prefer the feel you get when doing things by hand personally. By the time I've switched on the compressor and allowed it to get to 12bar, pulled the airline out and then got the impact gun out of the toolbox, it's generally not much quicker using ugga dugga gun anyway.

Battery will be different of course as it's ready to go as long as it's charged.

Talking of wheel nuts, I had to take a wheel off my VSE the other night. First time I've taken a wheel off it and I had to use a 3/4" bar and socket to shift the bloody nuts. I've never come across them that tight. My normal 1/2" gear looked like a banana when trying to undo them.

David.

Our driveway is gravel and there's not been any skipping from it at all when doing a 3 point turn or on a tight lock so I'm fairly confident the VC is ok.

The car drives nicely enough, it's just you feel like you're constantly steering into it to correct it. Between 11:30 and 12:30 you can wiggle the steering on the motorway and not have any chance in direction of the car so I'm fairly convinced it's something with play in the steering.

David.

Keep your eyes open for anybody doing windscreen repairs whilst out and about or pop into any of their workshops. You might find someone who will do it for you as a homer if you cross their palms with pieces of paper.

I've got to many cars really...

A Pair of 2002 Vogue SE P38's... (There's a 4.6 HSE that I don't have any pictures of too)

A 1998 Citroen Xantia Activa V6 (Has hydraulic rams instead of drop links so there's never more then 0.5 degrees of body roll) In the UK we only ever got a 2.0 Turbo which I didn't like so mine was converted to a 3.0 V6 24v manual in 2014. Currently covered 56k miles. She only gets taxed for the summer months.

A 2000 Citroen XM V6 Exclusive - One of the last V6 XM's off the production line. Currently sitting on 53k miles. She only gets taxed for the summer months.

A 2010 Peugeot 407 Coupe 3.0 HDI (Only around 40 in the UK as 3.0 HDI) Remapped and running 300bhp.

A 2012 Citroen C6 3.0 HDi Exclusive (On 25 3.0 HDI in the UK so I went to France for mine)

A 2014 Jaguar XFR (510bhp, RWD, stupidly quick impulse buy... seemed a good idea at the time)

A 1954 Ferguson TEF 20.

And the one I never should have sold...

A 2006 Range Rover Supercharged. The previous owner spent £7k on it in 2013 doing a 2012 facelift on the car...

Well, I decided to grab the bull by the horns to try and remove my steering wander.

I replaced the drag link and track rod last night and test drove the car in between each change. Neither of them seem to have made any difference.

I had a look at doing the steering linkage but I think I'm going to have to remove the majority of my LPG kit to get to it as the vaporiser, safety solenoid and pipework are all directly about the steering box and link which is annoying.

I will get to the bottom of this though. I keep thinking that changing the steering box and steering link together will be easier but I'd really like to know which one makes the biggest difference. I bought the steering box used from a guy who had a couple of P38's, one of which he was breaking. He reckoned that it drove very well and there was no play or wander in the steering so fingers crossed!

David.

Did you do a photographic diary of your restoration? I'd love to see it and a load of pictures of your car if you've got any. A Linley is a very special one indeed.

I was doing some digging the other night. We have 1 registered Linley in the UK. It's currently declared off the road so I'd imagine that it's probably the one in the Dunsfold Collection. We know you've got one in the US, I'd love to know where the other 5 are hiding. It's the holy grail of P38's!

David.

Hmm... maybe I should spend a bit of time with some leather cleaner and conditioner in mine then... Thanks for that!

This one is in better condition then I thought it was going to be in given the 80 quid it cost but it's not perfect.

The guy on Facebook who refurbishes them does an amazing job but the leather looks a bit more white in the pictures then the original. I can't help but think the seats will look very yellow in comparison.

David.

On one of the VSE's I swapped the front height sensors from left to right and found one of my rear ones hanging on by one bolt and rotating when raising and lowering hence my EAS errors.

On the other VSE I fitted new front airbags as one was leaking air and one was visibly perished.

Also cleaned up my new half wood/half leather steering wheel but can't decide if I should have it refurbished before fitting it or not.

David.

My air con needs regassing as I've changed the condenser, drier and all of the aluminium under bonnet pipes now to cure leaks.

It was regassed and lasted 24hrs as it was leaking from the pipe that sits against the bulkhead. Would you renew the drier if it was new 12 months ago and hasn't been used since but has been fitted whilst there was a pinhole in the pipe?

I'd like to have it done before a long trip down south though!

David.

I'd be up for a trip down in one of the Vogue SE's!

David.

That looks really smart! Having had a couple of modern cars, it's the things like bluetooth streaming, DAB, etc. that you miss in the P38.

I got around the bluetooth streaming with a GROM unit but that looks really smart there.

David.

After the problems I had getting an exhaust to fit this car, the next time either of them need an exhaust they’ll be getting a stainless one.

I like the Janspeed ones, however, I like the one that was fitted to the Linley with 2 pipes on either side. Janspeed ones seem to have disappeared from most places too.

There’s an exhaust place in Nottingham who I’ve used before for my Citroen XM called PD Gough who did an absolutely superb job. They make their systems as a close copy to original to keep noise, etc to a minimum.

I’d probably go back there if I needed to.

David.

I keep thinking of doing similar to the wiring loom on our VSE but disconnecting the LPG from it puts me right off.

I noticed a very slight misfire on this car last week. Not much but it was there. I whipped the plugs out of the NS bank as it's easier then the OS one and sure enough they were all pretty black and fouled.

I went and got Testbook and had a sniff and it was registering the occasional misfire on several cylinders. At this point I noticed that one lambda sensor was barely switching and the other was totally solid in it's reading.

I replaced both of these sensors when I bought the car with ones off eBay. They were advertised as being Genuine but had no writing on them at all. After a massive fight with the car they were fitted. One of them pulled the threads out of the cats when we tried to remove the original. About 400 miles after they were fitted, Simon mapped my LPG. At the time he commented on one of them not switching but I totally forgot about it until the other night.

Today, 2 genuine Bosch sensors arrived from eBay. I was going to order them from Island 4x4 which including VAT would have been circa £140. On eBay, 2 genuine Bosch ones were £91. I fitted them this evening in a few minutes, loaded up Testbook and started the car. Within a couple of minutes both sensors were switching as you'd expect them too.

A quick squirt around the country lanes where we live and it feels much livelier, smoother and torquier then it ever has done.

I must also thank Marty as before heading to the workshop on Saturday I printed off the wiring diagrams so that I could check everything else before spending on the sensors... turned out I'd printed the GEMS wiring. Marty was online and sent me the wiring which saved me a trip home and was a massive help/time saver!

Turns out I'm running out of things to sort out on this P38 now!

David.

I had the same issue with Halfords last week. Ordered a few things but didn't get the text.

Halfords advertise stuff on the website that they don't always stock in their local stores so you won't get the text message until it's been delivered to the store.

I ordered a 1/4" socket set, a rail of 3/8" deep sockets and a rail of 1/4" deep sockets. They didn't have the long 3/8" sockets so had to wait from Monday until Saturday for the text message telling me I could go and collect.

David.